I’ll start with Circling itself, for those who are not familiar. Note: if you plan to try any of these, be careful and make sure everyone involved knows what rules will be used (in advance) before they agree to participate. For all of these, I’d suggest stating a time limit up front and using a timer to end it at that time (of course, when the timer goes off, the group can decide to do it again if they want).

(1) Circling: a group conversation where the topic of the conversation is limited to what’s happening right now, during the experience itself. As Duncan Sabien explains it: “‘Circling’ is a special kind of conversation, in which the topic of the conversation is the subjective experience of the conversation, as it’s happening., i.e., the thing you are all talking about is what it is like for each of you to be present in the conversation as it unfolds. What you’re noticing, what you’re feeling, the impressions and stories you have of the other people, the shifts in your own physical and emotional state. You take the flurry of second-to-second thoughts, feelings, and reactions that would normally shape and inform what you would say next, and instead just talk about them directly, e.g., “Oh, huh—while I was listening to what you just said, I noticed I felt an impulse to [whatever].”

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(2) Hot Seat Circling: like circling, but the focus of the conversation and attention is one pre-determined person who sits in the middle. (This is a known variant of Circling, not something I came up with.)

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And here are my brainstormed ideas for alternatives:

(3) Clear-ing: everyone sits quietly and clears their mind. Each person tries to notice the very first thought that pops into their mind, and then says it aloud to the group. Then the group resets and does it again (I suggest doing this only for a short amount of time – say, 5 minutes).

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(4) Past-ing: the focus of the conversation must be on the past only. For instance, “Hearing you say that, I’m reminded of a time when…”

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(5) Future-ing: the focus of the conversation must be on the future only. For instance, [in response to what someone else said] “That reminds me that I hope to one day…”

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(6) Echo-ing: the focus of the conversation must be the last thing that was said. You start by repeating (or summarizing what the other person said), and then you react to it (and the next person repeats what you said and reacts to it, and so on).

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(7) Feelings: the only topic of the conversation is the feelings or emotions of attendees. It can be their current feelings, past feelings, or feelings in response to feelings, etc.

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(8) Role-ing: each person in the circle has only one thing they are allowed to do. Every 5 minutes, the roles rotate so that participants get to play different roles:

Role 1: You can only express how you feel or what emotions you’re having.

Role 2: You can only express your cognitive/analytical thoughts about what’s happening right now.

Role 3: You can only ask questions (but people must still stay within their role to try to answer).

Role 4: The only thing you can do is guess what you think others are thinking or feeling.

Role 5: The only thing you can do is ask others to elaborate on what they said.

Role 6: You’re doing normal circling (i.e., you can only talk about what’s happening here and now, but you can talk about any aspect of it that you want).

With smaller or larger groups, you can decide which roles you want and how many of each. You can also have a visual marker in front of each person to indicate what role they are in.

An alternative to Role-ing would be that everyone is in the same role at the same time (e.g., everyone starts in Role 1), and every 5 minutes, everyone switches to the next role.

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(9) Weird-ing: you can only talk about things that normally would not be said, or that normally would be unusual, odd, awkward, or inappropriate to talk about.

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(10) Limit-ing: it starts as a normal conversation. Every 5 minutes, someone suggests a new type of thing you’re not allowed to talk about or a new constraint on conversation (e.g., “you can’t talk about the future” or “everything you say must be at least slightly vulnerable”), then there is a vote. If accepted by a unanimous vote, it gets added to the list of rules (if not, someone else proposes a rule, going around the circle until a rule is accepted by a unanimous vote). If no rule is accepted, then continue for 5 more minutes with no new rule additions. Each time a new rule is added, it gets written on a piece of paper or whiteboard that everyone can see, so it’s clear what all the rules are. Each voting round starts with the person after the one who proposed the last accepted rule.

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(11) Squaring (Sam Rosen’s alternative): “Squaring is also an authentic relating game, but it’s less focused on the here and now. It’s about focusing on and discussing true dynamics that exist between people through time. Some examples of squaring would be:

• Hey, I am surprised we aren’t closer friends. Do you know what’s going on there?

• I notice you plausibly deny flirting with my girlfriend. And it’s not a big deal, and I still love you, but I’d like it if you did it slightly less.

• In our past conversations, I’ve felt you weren’t that curious about what I had to say. Am I imagining this, or am I actually boring you?

• I think you are really insightful, and I don’t think you get enough credit for that, so here’s me giving you credit.

In squaring, you should try to give people your best model of yourself. You should focus on the information you think would be useful to the person you are talking to.”

This piece was first written on August 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on September 29, 2025.

If you’re like me and really dislike small talk, you may find these ideas useful.

(1) If you end up talking about their work, ask what they (i) most like about it and (ii) find most challenging about it.

(2) If they end up asking about your work, try to explain what you do in a way you’ve never experimented with before.

Example: if you’re a programmer, maybe you’ll say your job is to convert ambiguous human goals to instructions that are so precise a computer can follow them.

(3) Pay close attention to the other person’s vibe and make a positive (and genuine) observation about their personality or manner. For instance, if they have a really pleasant-sounding voice, tell them that. If they give off a lot of confidence, compliment them on it.

(4) Assume the other person is worth knowing. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Now your job in the conversation is to explore what’s interesting about this person.

(5) When the conversation lulls, say, “This is random, but I’ve been thinking a lot about something lately, and I’m curious what your take on it would be.” Then ask a question you’ve been pondering (e.g., “How do you decide how much time to spend making new friends?”)

(6) Assign yourself the goal of figuring out what they would enjoy talking about (but without directly asking – since “what would you like to talk about?” puts uncomfortable pressure on them). Ask questions about their thoughts and interests to discover the right topic.

(7) If there’s something interesting in the environment, remark on it and ask what their reaction to it is or open the door for them to comment on it too.

Example: “I just noticed that house has a different style of architecture from the others. Do you like its style better or worse?”

(8) Ask the person what sort of things they are interested in. This can be a slightly awkward question, but I think it’s often worth it. In my experience, it tends to have a good payoff in that it helps you jump to talking about something the other person cares about. Sometimes people will talk about work (when they enjoy it), but other times, they will bring up an idea they are interested in or a hobby they are passionate about, etc. From there, I find it’s typically much faster to get to mutually interesting conversations than if we started with small talk.

The thing about small talk is that it’s designed to be low-risk.

Deviating from small talk increases the chance that a conversation ends up being awkward.

And, of course, it’s possible the other person just doesn’t want to engage with you on a deeper level than small talk. It’s important to stay attuned to how the other person is feeling and not push them beyond the level of engagement that they feel comfortable with.

But when done skillfully, strategies like these often make the conversation much more interesting for everyone involved.

This was first written on December 3, 2022, and first appeared on this site on June 4, 2023.

You might think that introverts would want the other person to talk more of the time, and extroverts would prefer to talk more, but that does not seem to be the case. People reported being most optimistic about conversations where they and the other participant express themselves about equally. This was true for every type of relationship: close friends, acquaintances, and strangers. For the sake of simplicity, I marked someone as an introvert if they were in the top 50% of that Big 5 trait on a two-question scale and otherwise marked them as an extrovert).

So it seems your best bet is to try to talk about 50% of the time if you want to make the most positive impression on others. People reported feeling at least somewhat positively about conversations where the other person speaks 40%-60% of the time, so this seems to be a safe range to stay in.

Close friends seem to have a bit more leeway than acquaintances and strangers, with people still reporting at least a somewhat positive reaction if close friends talk 30%-70% of the time. With acquaintances and strangers, though, you’re better off sticking to the 40%-60% rule of thumb.

But regardless of the closeness of the relationship, and also regardless of whether the rater was more introverted or extroverted, people reported a negative reaction if the other person talks 80% or more of the time, or if the other person talks 20% or less of the time.

I would have assumed that over-talking is more annoying than under-talking, so I was surprised to find that over, and under-talking were viewed negatively to a fairly similar degree.

So if you often talk more than 80% of the time in conversations or less than 20% of the time, you’re probably making a negative impression without realizing it. Of course, there are exceptions depending on circumstances (e.g., if someone asks you to teach them something, or if you have a story you’re telling that you know the other person is interested in, or if you happen to know that the other person doesn’t like to talk much).

My anecdotal observation is that there are quite a lot of people who over-talk. But interestingly, only 2% of people said they tend to prefer talking more than the other person in a conversation, with 21% saying they tend to prefer talking *less* than the other person. To me, this suggests a lack of awareness (i.e., that people who over-talk do it without realizing it happens or enjoys it without realizing they enjoy it).

I should add: I think there are ways to do over-talking and under-talking very well, but that these are fairly rare. For instance, someone who many people find hilarious may produce a very positive reaction when substantially over-talking, and someone who asks a lot of really thoughtful questions that get the other person thinking may be delightful despite substantially under-talking.

When I find myself in a conversation with a person who won’t let me get a word in edgewise, I sometimes try to figure out why that’s happening.

I’ve observed five types of over-talking:

Excited over-talking: when the person is so enthusiastic about what they are saying that they don’t realize how long they’ve been talking for (e.g., someone talking about their fun new project).

Nervous over-talking: when a person feels uncomfortable letting the conversation stall even for a moment, so talks to fill up the space (e.g., someone with high anxiety entertaining their in-laws who they rarely see).

Narcissistic over-talking: when a person assumes that others just love to hear them talk, or when a person enjoys talking a lot and is indifferent to how others feel about this (e.g., a pompous celebrity that is used to everyone sucking up to them)

Expressive over-talking: when a person is feeling lonely or a lack of human connection in general or hasn’t had enough of an opportunity to talk about something they really want to talk to someone about (e.g., someone who has just gotten back from a monastery where speaking was forbidden).

Unaware over-talking: when a person isn’t properly reading how their conversational partner feels and thinks their partner is much more engaged than they really are, or simply hasn’t noticed that they’ve been talking for too long and that their conversation partner is getting annoyed (e.g., someone with weak facial reading skills).

So remember: if you want to make the most positive impression on others, try to generally talk no more than 60% of the time and no less than 40% of the time.

LOOK make eye contact when people are talking to you (but look away occasionally so as not to be creepy, and look away for a greater proportion of the time when you’re talking since that’s what people do naturally)

REPEAT reflect back to people what they’ve said to you (e.g., “So you’re saying that…”)

ASK get people talking about themselves by asking questions, and follow up to their responses with further questions (e.g., “It sounds like you don’t like your work, why is that?”)

DISCOVER figure out what the person you’re talking to really cares about and talk to them about those things (e.g., “How did you originally get interested in painting?”)

MIMIC copy the body language of the person you’re talking to (e.g., if they sit up tall, you sit up tall)

COMPLIMENT give genuine compliments and make the person feel liked

REWARD make sure the other person feels good during the interaction and enjoys it.

I think this advice is largely accurate. People would tend to be more liked on average if they did more of these things. Very specific and explicit advice like this can also, I think, be very helpful for people whose social instincts are not well-tuned or who find socializing especially difficult.

But this advice can also sometimes come off as robotic (“generate these inputs to the system to cause a certain response output”) or even manipulative when used in pursuit of personal gain (“run this social algorithm and people will come to like and trust you so that you can get what you want”).

I think there is a simpler and more genuine distillation of the above advice, namely:

Give the person you’re interacting with your complete, genuine, interested attention.

That means paying attention to nothing but that other person during a conversation; letting go of any distracting thoughts that pop into your mind and not paying attention to other things happening in the room. It also means adopting a genuine interest in the other person (e.g., curiosity about them, or a desire to know them or see the valuable things in them). I’m not advocating simply appearing like you are giving your complete interested attention. I’m suggesting that you actually be focused and interested in the other person. This is not necessarily easy to do.

To understand the mindset I’m referring to a bit better, consider this metaphor. Imagine you’re going to an art gallery that you’ve heard (from a reliable source) has incredible, complex art that requires effort to understand. In that circumstance, you might approach each piece of art with “interested attention.” You’re assuming there is something worth seeing there, so even if, at first, you don’t “get” a piece, you’re going to keep focussing on it with interest to try to uncover its value. This interest is genuine before you even know what the value is because you’re giving the benefit of the doubt. If you start thinking about what you’re having later for lunch or glancing ahead prematurely to the next piece of art, it’s going to interfere with the experience. The “interested attention” causes you to notice more that’s of value, but also, potentially to value more of what you notice.

Contrast this with a situation where a friend dragged you unwillingly to an art gallery, and you’ve heard the art is terrible. You may pay little attention to each piece and view the art with little interest. If you don’t understand a piece right away, you may immediately move on to the next one. This is the opposite of “interested attention.”

While interested attention does not necessarily cause all the “likable” behaviors listed above, I think that it does tend to make them significantly more likely. Hence, I think it will tend to make you more likable.

Here’s why:

LOOK the more focused attention you have on someone, the more of a tendency I think you’ll have to look right at them, and therefore to make eye contact.

REPEAT if you are interested in someone, you’ll want to actually understand what they’re saying, and repeating back your current understanding is a natural way to confirm that you got it right.

ASK if you’re truly interested in someone, you’ll tend to ask them questions rather than spending most of the time talking about yourself.

DISCOVER interest in a person tends to make us want to understand them, and figuring out what someone really cares about is an important part of that understanding.

MIMIC while full attention on another person may not cause you to cross your legs when they cross theirs, it will presumably make you more likely to notice what they are feeling, and therefore to respond to it appropriately. So if you notice the other person is somber, with a sunken posture, you may well adopt a more somber tone and posture to adopt.

COMPLIMENT if you are giving someone your interested attention, you’re assuming there is something worth knowing about them, which presumably makes it easier to see their positive qualities, setting you up to give compliments.

REWARD it usually feels good to have another person be genuinely interested in us and even to have someone pay deep attention to us.

So if we give our genuine and complete interested attention, I expect it will tend to cause others to like being around us for a variety of reasons. And it’s good for both us and those we are around. Plus, it feels less icky than ticking a bunch of charisma boxes, especially if we replace the goal of being likable or charismatic with the goal of deeply connecting with others.

But how do we actually give interested attention to someone?

– try to make sure we are actually fully focused on them when they speak
– try to make sure we understand what they are trying to communicate
– let stray or distracting thoughts go when they occur during conversion
– not let ourselves become distracted by whatever else is happening in the room (unless it is something we can bring into the conversation) by returning focus to the person we are speaking to
– avoid checking our phones around others
– give others the benefit of the doubt
– assume others have true value even if they haven’t shown it to us yet
– foster our curiosity for what other people are like

Now, of course, it’s not always appropriate to give someone interested attention, for instance, if that person seems to themselves lack interest in continuing the interaction, or if that person seems to be responding negatively, or if there is limited time for the interaction. Maybe the other person wants to be left alone, and if so, we should go away.
Furthermore, there are, of course, many cases where we don’t desire to forge a deeper connection with a person, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We may not be in the mood, or not like the other person, or think that giving too much attention would signal something we don’t want to signal, or simply need to end the interaction soon.
But when we do want to create stronger connections, I think we should strive to give each other our complete and genuine interested attention. It’s not easy, but it’s probably worth it.